photo credit: snowpea&bokchoi

The Mission

The slimy little beast you see in the photo above you is natto. Its major claim to fame in the greater Japanese sphere of influence is that gaijin such as myself, hate and cannot eat it, while Japanese 4-year olds happily slurp it down and laugh at us.  Well I’ve had enough!  No longer will I suffer the indignity, the shame of having to bow under natto’s cruel yoke!

For the next month I’m going to be eating natto once a day, every day, without exception.

For this, the inaugural admittedly scientifically unsound experiment here on Kikai Castaway, I resolve to test whether I can overcome my aversion to natto with overwhelming force, and a simple change of viewpoint.

A Little History

“Nihon shoku…daijoubu desu ka?” Can you eat Japanese food? For some reason people all over Japan always ask this question like they’re diffusing a bomb.  I suspect they may be afraid they are going to offend me. That they will force me to admit my terrible gaijin-y shame, and I will burst into a tearful chorus of:

“DEKINAI!!!! DAIJOBU JYANAIIIII!!!!” I CAN’T! IT’S NOT OK!

Then I will be so shamed that I will have to leave the island forever, perhaps the country, maybe get a job somewhere selling body parts in a land with a less harsh culinary climate.  They don’t want to do that to me, but they just have to know.  So they ask like they’re cutting the blue wire.

“Un, daijobu.” “Yeah, it’s fine” I am entitled to reply smugly.  Or at least I would be if not for the, sigh, single Japanese food I have still not managed to conquer. My Achilles heel, my nemesis, my foe of foes: Natto.  Instead, I have to settle for “Un, daijobu…natto igai ni” “Yeah, it’s fine…except natto“.

Do not get me wrong, by any rubric I am already a mighty combatant in the Japanese food arena. I have enjoyed every raw sea creature that it is legal to consume (and perhaps one or two that are not, I’m on too clear on the legality of some of the shellfish they keep dragging up), blindingly sour homemade umeboshi plums, and every manner of slimy sea vegetable that has been placed before me. Salted fish ovaries, raw horse and goat, whole grilled sardines (head first), roasted pig face, shark steak, and conch mouth.  I will not only eat every last one of them, I will enjoy them.

But it rings hollow.  Though there are plenty of weird Japanese foods I haven’t eaten yet: bee larvae, fish sperm, and tiny live fish drunk whole in a bowl of water to name a few, I would have no problems trying any of them.  I would eat them.  Natto is the only thing which I, as of this moment, will reject on the basis of can’t.

(Note: I also make it a point not to eat whales, dolphins, or turtles. I’m a diver, and I rather enjoy meeting all of them underwater. And it’s kind of a have cake or eat it situation.)

It’s due time I climbed my Japanese food Everest.

But Adam, Just What Is Natto?

I’m glad you asked! Natto = soybeans + bacteria + time. It is a food renowned among terrified foreigners for its overpowering stench somewhere between old cheese and gym socks, as well as it’s truly mighty neba-neba-tude, a Japanese adjective which combines all the best parts of slimy and sticky.  If you’ve ever eaten okra, you have some idea of what neba-neba is, only natto makes okra look like dry crackers. Natto expresses its particular brand of neba-neba by producing long, incredibly sticky strands of rotten bean juice, that have enough structural wherewithal to stretch from bowl to mouth  without flinching, often requiring the poor eater to have to take several swipes at the strands to dislodge them. Yumm!

Natto is customarily consumed as a breakfast food, and the two most common preparations I have come across seem to be:

A) Given a vigorous stir to really rile up the natto for maximum strandy neba-neba, plain, over warm rice.

B) Given the same aggressive once over with some chopsticks, then further mixed with soy sauce, and Japanese karashi mustard.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Natto can be seen mixed with mayo, served as a filling for onigiri (rice balls) and a topping for sushi, or battered and deep-fried to make natto tempura.  There’s even natto ice cream. Google it.

Given its checkered reputation, you are probably wondering exactly what has possessed me to decide I want it in my diet.  Perhaps the island sun has finally gotten to me?

Aside from the visceral joy of furthering the myth that I can do anything, bragging rights throughout the Japans, and the added fun of getting to learn and teach along with the folks playing the home version (or just reading along), there is one other major reason why I decided I really need to learn to love this particular fermented treat:

Natto is nutritional gold.

If we are to believe the word of the wiki (and I see no reason why we should not), natto consumption can lead to one or more of the following superpowers:

• Reduced likelihood of blood clots.
• Alzheimer’s prevention and potentially treatment.
• Super-human bone density from all that vitamin K. Watch a 90-year-old Japanese dude sprint up a mountain wearing a full pack and then tell me that bone density doesn’t matter.
• Suppress excessive immune reaction.
• Prevent cancer.
• Lower cholesterol.
• Shoot fire from your finger-tips.
• Antibiotic properties.
• And a truly impressive 7-8 grams of protein per serving to boot.

Did I mention the fire from the finger-tips bit? It’s very important.

You Can Get Used to Anything

Despite the dogma, the truth is that not all Japanese people are in love with natto. A lot of them denounce it for the slimy beast it is along with the foreign natto hating public.  Certain regions of Japan have a particularly insatiable lust for the spoiled bean goo, generally starting in Tokyo and reaching north to Hokkaido.  Other regions, basically everything east of Tokyo, are not head over heels for the stuff. You can find it, but the rate of exposure tends to be lower.

My dive buddy, and island otousan (father) Yoda-san comes from Kansai, where Osaka and Kyoto are, a region located firmly in anti-natto territory. As a result, he did not grow up sucking natto down with breakfast, and didn’t really like natto throughout much of his early life.  At some point though, after coming down to Kikai, he started eating the stuff for reasons he refuses to explain, but I cannot discount mob involvement.  Wouldn’t you know it, slowly over repeated exposure to the rotten slippery mass he came to tolerate and then enjoy eating natto.  I don’t think it was the result of any sharp skull trauma either. I think he just wasn’t used to the flavor at first, and over time he got used to it. This isn’t a particularly novel leap of logic, but for some reason it’s one that people are surprisingly slow to make.  You can get used to just about anything, with enough experience.

There are a lot of things which people tend to try the first time, denounce outright, and then repeatedly reinforce their hatred of.  I didn’t like natto the first time I ate it, probably because everyone told me that I was going to hate natto the first time I ate it, so I went out of my way to make sure I ate it in a fashion which was most likely to meet my expectations (plain, in a bowl, scowling).  Every time after that, whenever natto was around, I’d start up my chorus of “oh how awful that stuff is, how can you stand the smell, and it gets everywhere, and you feel like you’ve been making out with a dead fish after you eat it, and did I mention the strands of rotten bean juice…”

The hatred naturally grew stronger. I reinforced my own largely irrational hatred of natto every time it was presented before me. I’m sure I also helped to plant that image in a lot of other people’s minds.  But there’s no reason it has to be like this.  Clearly from Yoda-san’s story, there is no reason why someone can’t learn to like natto.  Further, if we accept that people are particularly good at interpreting events to meet their expectations (self-fulfilling prophecies, if you will. More on these in later posts), then someone looking to add natto to their diet could potentially do so by:

A) Eating a lot of natto to get used to it and,

B) Doing so with a positive attitude. I really do want to be able to eat natto. It’s one of nature’s super foods, and one of the healthiest foods in the famously healthy Japanese diet.

It’s that simple.

Bring it on.

So, How Are We Doing This Adam?

Once a day, every day, for 30 days.

I’m defining a serving as one single-serving natto fun-pack, which comes in at about half a cup of natto. No, I’m not going to actually measure it as I don’t want to create a precedent of scientific rigor.

I’m arguing that at least one day a week should be for each of the two most common natto preparations, with the other days open to the addition of other less-common ingredients, or even some really oddball fun stuff like tempura.

Aside from that, expect me to be back about once a week to keep you updated on this project.

I fully encourage any of you who want to play the home version to do so in the comments section down below.

Happy Eating!